Yesterday morning—the calm before the storm, I think, because now I'm feeling tossed around by, well, feelings. Bear with me while I try to get my bearings! My dinner with a friend last night somehow left me in worse shape. It’s not like she told me anything new about H—in a lot of ways it was like every other dinner we’ve had, where she says she’s surprised as I am he hasn’t filed yet. I know he doesn’t have heart-to-heart talks with her, but she does ask him what’s up from time to time, and he always has some new reason why he didn’t get to filing this week. She sees the positive changes in him too—that he’s not as angry, not drinking to excess (though it seems last night he did, because he's home but his car isn't... did V-Day get to him too? Who knows.). She feels he was probably mad at himself for letting things get to the point in our M where they weren’t “fixable” (his words to me around BD 1 & 2), thus the period of coping with drinking and nights out. He’s still going to counseling.
Nothing revelatory, and I had no expectations of any revelations, so why did I leave the dinner feeling so utterly defeated? I tried to reason through it last night, but I just felt a new level of sad and numb.That gloomy, depressed feeling persists. I guess it has to do with getting a glimpse of him from someone else's perspective, one that happens to reinforce my fears. Okay, so he’s not prioritizing filing ASAP for whatever random reason, but he's planning on it (and maybe taking some other steps I don't even know about), and it seems his attitude that it’s too late for R and we're unfixable hasn’t changed, at least as far as what he reveals to this friend.
None of that is news to me, but my mind reacted as if it was. Is it just having it confirmed again that is hard for me? Do I really expect he would share any deeper thoughts, if he ever had them, with this friend, especially when he knows she is my friend too? No... but it still hurts to see, through her eyes, how different my outlook is from his. It's as if I'm tucked into my own little hopeful bubble, and that hope ends up feeling false and naive when I step outside of it. My bubble is filled with what I know from MWD and what I read here in various threads: WAS by necessity see things as unfixable, any changes in a WAS/MLC scenario happen very slowly, for the most part, and are not always observable. Over and over I read that what is going on in their minds is very different than what we as LBSes or others assume. Change starting not with a declaration of love but a whisper of doubt, etc. As I type all of that out now, it doesn't seem so incredibly naive or false.
Is all this sadness stemming from confronting that I'm not in that place I’m supposed to try to get to, where I’m okay with either outcome, D or no (R or no)? I'm just not. I'm a broken record. I'm still afraid of D. I still haven't let go, though I know that is all I can do. The truth is I want with my whole heart to have H in my life. That desire hasn't gone away no matter how much stronger or more independent I've become. DnJ, I think you would point me to desires and hopes again. That desire doesn't have to go away, but it shouldn't be the sum of my happiness. It's not the sum, but I still don't want to imagine my life without him in it. Our friendship, our relationship was only a part of what made my life joyful and rich, but it was such a big, wonderful part.
It might not seem like I'm replying to the last post, but I know this is all wrapped up together. People keep coming in and out at my job and I have to be cheerful and engage and I don't want to see anyone, so of course it's busy today. I'm having trouble connecting my thoughts! I will have to keep reading and thinking about it.
Originally Posted by DnJ
Change that deep held conviction, the expecting the least generous. Prepare for the optimistic outcome. Change how you see the world and the world changes with you.
I know this is a big change in how I approach events in my life big and small, one that I really need to work on in order to make my life better in general. Reading these words make me cry for some reason. I know it's connected to everything I've been feeling. I'm not sure how to take the first step. It starts with changing my thoughts.
